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My understanding is that most of the oils we use are unhealthy. They are highly processed and inflammatory. The good oils are avocado oil, extra virgin olive o

My understanding is that most of the oils we use are unhealthy. They are highly processed and inflammatory. The good oils are avocado oil, extra virgin olive oil and coconut oil. Is this correct?

andreilys 5y ago
Yes afaik, although I’ve heard some ppl say that coconut oil has too much saturated fat making it not great for you. Avocado oil seems to be the best?
- sydbarrett74 5y ago
  My research shows that coconut oil's benefits are chiefly as a topical treatment. As far as ingesting it, the benefits are minimal to nonexistent, and better derived from other sources.
  - andreilys 5y ago
    Yea I guess the chief benefit of using coconut oil is you’re not ingesting seed oils which seem to be quite harmful.
baby-yoda 5y ago
avocado might not be so trustworthy, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30105062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30105062 ghee is a great alternative IMO.
- ______-_-______ 5y ago
  Has anyone done the research to find a reputable olive oil brand?
  - exhilaration 5y ago
    Consumer Reports, from 10 years ago: https://imgur.com/a/ChyyFnw https://imgur.com/a/ChyyFnw Personally I only purchase California olive oil, I don't trust anything coming out of Europe due to the risk of adulteration. If you want a widely available brand: California Olive Ranch but look at the label carefully, you only want their 100% California olive oil.
    - hammock 5y ago
      I also only purchase California olive oil. Costco has big bottles for around $20 and it might be single origin too, I can't recall at the moment.
  - krrrh 5y ago
    It's mentioned in the linked to article: > Only two brands produced samples that were pure and nonoxidized. Those were Chosen Foods and Marianne’s Avocado Oil, both refined avocado oils made in Mexico. Among the virgin grades, CalPure produced in California was pure and fresher than the other samples in the same grade
09bjb 5y ago
It's more nuanced than that but you could do a lot worse than that list. Fat profile matters, and smoke point matters, e.g. olive oil is great but if you're frying stuff with it you're turning a lot of it toxic; avocado oil is better for high heat.
- kansface 5y ago
  Any word on peanut oil?
  - slothtrop 5y ago
    same pitfalls as most vegetable oils, and high in omega 6, which can throw off your omega3:6 ratio if you consume lots, which increases risk of obesity among other things.
- mrfusion 5y ago
  So olive oil would be bad to use in the air fryer? Also what’s the best substitute for vegetable oil for baking?
- Pyramus 5y ago
  I thought it was a common myth that the smoke point of an oil correlates with toxicity -- do you have a source that there is a causal relationship? The reason for olive oil not being used for deep frying is mostly taste and cost, as far as I know.
  - jimbob45 5y ago
    Smoke point refers to the temperature at which an oil will break down. You're right that broken-down oil is unhealthy but, more importantly, it makes for bad-tasting food and should be avoided when possible. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/cooking-oils-and-smoke-points-what-to-know-and-how-to-choose https://www.masterclass.com/articles/cooking-oils-and-smoke-...
    - Pyramus 5y ago
lkxijlewlf 5y ago
Wait, isn't coconut oil bad?
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Well, it's mostly saturated fat. It's good for frying. Also not bad to rub on dry skin.
- aesch 5y ago
  Coconut oil is very high in saturated fats which some people may want to avoid.
sva_ 5y ago
Be aware that all these oils contain a lot of omega-6, and very little omega-3 fatty acids. So if you consume a lot of that stuff, you also need a good source of omega-3 DHA/EPA (fish or supplement). Also, there's quite a bit of controversy around the purported health benefits of coconut oil. Personally, I'm rather skeptical about it.
adrian_b 5y ago
There are 3 characteristics of the oils that influence how healthy they are. The first is the fatty acid profile, i.e. the relative quantities of fatty acids. It is best when the most abundant fatty acid is oleic acid. This is true for olive oil and avocado oil and for certain varieties of other oils which are claimed to be "high oleic", e.g. high oleic sunflower oil. For the oils with high percentage of saturated fatty acids, it is better to have little palmitic acid and more of either longer fatty acids, i.e. stearic acid like in cocoa butter or shorter fatty acids, like lauric acid in coconut oil. Besides the fatty acid profile, some oils are known to contain other substances with favorable influences. This is known with reasonable certainty only for extra virgin olive oil, which is good for preventing cardiovascular diseases but it is not known which exactly is the substance with the good effect. And third, there are oils which may contain other substances with bad effects, as shown here for the soybean oil or as is the case for the traditional rapeseed oil with erucic acid. Such oils must be avoided, at least until the undesirable substance is identified precisely and its removal from the oil becomes possible.
- yissp 5y ago
  As I understand it, the evidence for erucic acid being harmful has been called into question more recently. See the footnotes for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erucic_acid#Health_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erucic_acid#Health_effects
  - adrian_b 5y ago
    Now it is understood that erucic acid is not so dangerous as initially believed, because rats are much more sensitive to it than most other mammals. Nevertheless, the same paragraph from Wikipedia says that erucic acid was shown to also cause heart problems in pigs, but at much higher quantities than in rats. Therefore it is dangerous, but only when eaten in larger quantities. Canola oil is widely used in food and it contains erucic acid. However it contains much less than traditional rapeseed oil, so the current food standards are based on the assumption that it should not have bad effects when eaten in normal quantities. Nevertheless, someone cautious could avoid it entirely, because the only desirable property of the oils which contain erucic acid is that they are cheap.
open-source-ux 5y ago
"...highly processed..." I think this is an important distinction for evaluating oils. For example, you mention avocado oil and coconut oil. Are these processed with heat (and possibly solvents)? Or are they cold-pressed with no other chemicals used to aid extraction? In the UK, it is very common to find cold-pressed rapeseed oil (canola oil) in supermarkets. The canola oil sold in US supermarkets is highly processed. Is the cold-pressed version still bad? The problem is that when seed oils are demonised, no distinction is made of the method of extraction. There are hundreds of researchers (and YouTubers) repeating the mantra 'seed oil = bad' without further distinction between heat-pressed and cold-press oil extraction. If extraction methods don't matter, then researchers need to provide evidence to confirm this.
- adrian_b 5y ago
  You are right that the extraction method matters a lot for any oil. Any method that uses high temperatures may cause various chemical reactions that degrade some of the oil components. Some of the methods that use solvents for extraction may leave very small quantities of the solvents in the oils (e.g. hexane, i.e. a light fraction of gasoline), which are undesirable. Nevertheless, cold-pressing is not necessarily the best method, even if it is preferable to most other old methods. While the extraction using carbon dioxide at high pressure (supercritical CO2) is also classified as a solvent extraction method, it does not leave anything in the oil and it is able to extract any oil more completely and with less degradation than any other method. However this modern method is encountered only in relatively recent oil production facilities, and unlike cold pressing it is not known by most people so it is not used in marketing. Thus, except for cold pressing, the buyer cannot know whether the oil has been produced by a worse method like hexane extraction or by a better method, like CO2 extraction.
intull 5y ago
Mostly, yes, unfortunately. Avocado oil is also quite highly processed but is the lesser among the evils. Extra virgin olive oil and unprocessed coconut oil are good. I've come to understand that reducing fat intake via cooking oils but increasing it via healthier raw/unprocessed fats are better (olive oil, dietary fats from fish, eggs, etc). Also note that, oils can oxidize fairly easily. I still don't know how to procure oils from supermarkets that I'm sure are not already oxidized. Then comes the matter of storing it in ways to prevent oils from oxidizing.

My understanding is that most of the oils we use are unhealthy. They are highly processed and inflammatory. The good oils are avocado oil, extra virgin olive oil and coconut oil. Is this correct?

andreilys 5y ago

Yes afaik, although I’ve heard some ppl say that coconut oil has too much saturated fat making it not great for you. Avocado oil seems to be the best?

sydbarrett74 5y ago
My research shows that coconut oil's benefits are chiefly as a topical treatment. As far as ingesting it, the benefits are minimal to nonexistent, and better derived from other sources.
- andreilys 5y ago
  Yea I guess the chief benefit of using coconut oil is you’re not ingesting seed oils which seem to be quite harmful.

baby-yoda 5y ago

avocado might not be so trustworthy, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30105062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30105062 ghee is a great alternative IMO.

______-_-______ 5y ago
Has anyone done the research to find a reputable olive oil brand?
- exhilaration 5y ago
  Consumer Reports, from 10 years ago: https://imgur.com/a/ChyyFnw https://imgur.com/a/ChyyFnw Personally I only purchase California olive oil, I don't trust anything coming out of Europe due to the risk of adulteration. If you want a widely available brand: California Olive Ranch but look at the label carefully, you only want their 100% California olive oil.
  - hammock 5y ago
    I also only purchase California olive oil. Costco has big bottles for around $20 and it might be single origin too, I can't recall at the moment.
- krrrh 5y ago
  It's mentioned in the linked to article: > Only two brands produced samples that were pure and nonoxidized. Those were Chosen Foods and Marianne’s Avocado Oil, both refined avocado oils made in Mexico. Among the virgin grades, CalPure produced in California was pure and fresher than the other samples in the same grade

09bjb 5y ago

It's more nuanced than that but you could do a lot worse than that list. Fat profile matters, and smoke point matters, e.g. olive oil is great but if you're frying stuff with it you're turning a lot of it toxic; avocado oil is better for high heat.

kansface 5y ago
Any word on peanut oil?
- slothtrop 5y ago
  same pitfalls as most vegetable oils, and high in omega 6, which can throw off your omega3:6 ratio if you consume lots, which increases risk of obesity among other things.
mrfusion 5y ago
So olive oil would be bad to use in the air fryer? Also what’s the best substitute for vegetable oil for baking?
Pyramus 5y ago
I thought it was a common myth that the smoke point of an oil correlates with toxicity -- do you have a source that there is a causal relationship? The reason for olive oil not being used for deep frying is mostly taste and cost, as far as I know.
- jimbob45 5y ago
  Smoke point refers to the temperature at which an oil will break down. You're right that broken-down oil is unhealthy but, more importantly, it makes for bad-tasting food and should be avoided when possible. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/cooking-oils-and-smoke-points-what-to-know-and-how-to-choose https://www.masterclass.com/articles/cooking-oils-and-smoke-...
  - Pyramus 5y ago

lkxijlewlf 5y ago

Wait, isn't coconut oil bad?

throwawayboise 5y ago
Well, it's mostly saturated fat. It's good for frying. Also not bad to rub on dry skin.
aesch 5y ago
Coconut oil is very high in saturated fats which some people may want to avoid.

sva_ 5y ago

Be aware that all these oils contain a lot of omega-6, and very little omega-3 fatty acids. So if you consume a lot of that stuff, you also need a good source of omega-3 DHA/EPA (fish or supplement). Also, there's quite a bit of controversy around the purported health benefits of coconut oil. Personally, I'm rather skeptical about it.

adrian_b 5y ago

There are 3 characteristics of the oils that influence how healthy they are. The first is the fatty acid profile, i.e. the relative quantities of fatty acids. It is best when the most abundant fatty acid is oleic acid. This is true for olive oil and avocado oil and for certain varieties of other oils which are claimed to be "high oleic", e.g. high oleic sunflower oil. For the oils with high percentage of saturated fatty acids, it is better to have little palmitic acid and more of either longer fatty acids, i.e. stearic acid like in cocoa butter or shorter fatty acids, like lauric acid in coconut oil. Besides the fatty acid profile, some oils are known to contain other substances with favorable influences. This is known with reasonable certainty only for extra virgin olive oil, which is good for preventing cardiovascular diseases but it is not known which exactly is the substance with the good effect. And third, there are oils which may contain other substances with bad effects, as shown here for the soybean oil or as is the case for the traditional rapeseed oil with erucic acid. Such oils must be avoided, at least until the undesirable substance is identified precisely and its removal from the oil becomes possible.

yissp 5y ago
As I understand it, the evidence for erucic acid being harmful has been called into question more recently. See the footnotes for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erucic_acid#Health_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erucic_acid#Health_effects
- adrian_b 5y ago
  Now it is understood that erucic acid is not so dangerous as initially believed, because rats are much more sensitive to it than most other mammals. Nevertheless, the same paragraph from Wikipedia says that erucic acid was shown to also cause heart problems in pigs, but at much higher quantities than in rats. Therefore it is dangerous, but only when eaten in larger quantities. Canola oil is widely used in food and it contains erucic acid. However it contains much less than traditional rapeseed oil, so the current food standards are based on the assumption that it should not have bad effects when eaten in normal quantities. Nevertheless, someone cautious could avoid it entirely, because the only desirable property of the oils which contain erucic acid is that they are cheap.

open-source-ux 5y ago

"...highly processed..." I think this is an important distinction for evaluating oils. For example, you mention avocado oil and coconut oil. Are these processed with heat (and possibly solvents)? Or are they cold-pressed with no other chemicals used to aid extraction? In the UK, it is very common to find cold-pressed rapeseed oil (canola oil) in supermarkets. The canola oil sold in US supermarkets is highly processed. Is the cold-pressed version still bad? The problem is that when seed oils are demonised, no distinction is made of the method of extraction. There are hundreds of researchers (and YouTubers) repeating the mantra 'seed oil = bad' without further distinction between heat-pressed and cold-press oil extraction. If extraction methods don't matter, then researchers need to provide evidence to confirm this.

adrian_b 5y ago
You are right that the extraction method matters a lot for any oil. Any method that uses high temperatures may cause various chemical reactions that degrade some of the oil components. Some of the methods that use solvents for extraction may leave very small quantities of the solvents in the oils (e.g. hexane, i.e. a light fraction of gasoline), which are undesirable. Nevertheless, cold-pressing is not necessarily the best method, even if it is preferable to most other old methods. While the extraction using carbon dioxide at high pressure (supercritical CO2) is also classified as a solvent extraction method, it does not leave anything in the oil and it is able to extract any oil more completely and with less degradation than any other method. However this modern method is encountered only in relatively recent oil production facilities, and unlike cold pressing it is not known by most people so it is not used in marketing. Thus, except for cold pressing, the buyer cannot know whether the oil has been produced by a worse method like hexane extraction or by a better method, like CO2 extraction.

intull 5y ago

Mostly, yes, unfortunately. Avocado oil is also quite highly processed but is the lesser among the evils. Extra virgin olive oil and unprocessed coconut oil are good. I've come to understand that reducing fat intake via cooking oils but increasing it via healthier raw/unprocessed fats are better (olive oil, dietary fats from fish, eggs, etc). Also note that, oils can oxidize fairly easily. I still don't know how to procure oils from supermarkets that I'm sure are not already oxidized. Then comes the matter of storing it in ways to prevent oils from oxidizing.